Tag Archive: Disabled

1936: Lebensraum(help·info) (German for “habitat” or literally “living space“) was one of the major genocidal political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. It served as the motivation for the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, aiming to provide extra space for the growth of the German population, for a Greater Germany. In Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, he detailed his belief that the German people needed Lebensraum (“living space”, i.e. land and raw materials), and that it should be found in Eastern Europe. It was the stated policy of the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and other Slavic populations, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate the land with Germanic people. The entire urban population was to be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus to feed Germany and allowing their replacement by a German upper class.

2012: Imposing policies which effectively force single people, small families, divorced, bereaved or mentally/physically disabled from larger Council/Housing Association houses: ie, forcing anyone receiving Benefits from their homes by changing Housing Benefit Rules in order to impose a burden of payment for unoccupied rooms – is, in effect, identical to the effect of disempowering, dispossessing and removing any right of freedom.

2012: The core issue to identify slavery or slave-labour in this situation is that: – Slaves can be held against their will. Slaves can be deprived of the right to refuse work or to leave without penalty. This Government has imposed a de-facto state of ‘debt-bondage‘ upon all those who are unable to work through impairment, disability or simple unemployment. That is Slavery!

The debt-bondage is held by the Government and is enforced in the form of “sanctions” – these ‘sanctions’ deprive a citizen of part or all of their benefits for a supposed infraction or breaking of imposed rigidly-applied ‘rules.’ Alongside this, it is made plain (though the threat is somewhat ambiguously stated publicly) that refusal to do ‘x’ or ‘y’ will result in sanctions being applied. This is State Indenture and another ‘de-facto’ form of enslavement. The final form of enslavement is much more insidious, for it calls upon the citizen to ‘volunteer’ to their own enslavement. There is no definitively explicit ‘punishment’ for not Volunteering, but it is ‘suggested’ that sanctions may be applied for some other supposed infringement. This too is a de-facto form of enslavement popularized in Third World Dictatorships – because through the threat of some ‘other’ punishment other than death (rather by threat of mutilation or amputation) , young boys and men were pressed into becoming pro-dictatorship ‘guerillas.’ The example may seem exaggerated, but its effect is the same – even in non-lethal circumstances.

1936: The expression comes from the title of a novel by German philologist Lorenz Diefenbach, Arbeit macht frei: Erzählung von Lorenz Diefenbach (1873), in which gamblers and fraudsters find the path to virtue through labour.[2] The phrase was also used in French (“le travail rend libre!”) by Auguste Forel, a Swiss ant scientist, neuroanatomist and psychiatrist, in his “Fourmis de la Suisse” [“Ants of Switzerland”] (1920).[3] In 1922, the Deutsche Schulverein of Vienna, an ethnic nationalist “protective” organization of Germans within the Austrian empire, printed membership stamps with the phrase Arbeit macht frei. It was adopted in 1928 by the Weimar government as a slogan extolling the effects of their desired policy of large-scale public works programmes to end unemployment. This use of the phrase was continued by the Nazi Partywhen it came to power in 1933.

Raised over the entrance to Auschwitz I where, according to BBC historian Laurence Rees in his “Auschwitz: a New History”, the sign was erected by order of commandant Rudolf Höss.

At Buchenwald, “Jedem das Seine” (literally, “to each his own”, but idiomatically “everyone gets what he deserves”) was used.

In The Kingdom of Auschwitz, Otto Friedrich wrote regarding Höss:

He seems not to have intended it as a mockery, nor even to have intended it literally, as a false promise that those who worked to exhaustion would eventually be released, but rather as a kind of mystical declaration that self-sacrifice in the form of endless labour does in itself bring a kind of spiritual freedom.[8]

2012: Minister for Work And Pensions Ian Duncan-Smith uses the phrase “Work makes you free..” (Ger. Arbeit Macht frei..) during a BBC Radio Four interview.. protesting that what he ‘means’ is that “any kind of work makes you feel freer, more empowered, more a part of society..” However, in the light of policies Ian Duncan-Smith imposed upon those in receipt of all manner of State Benefits (and in particular those who have had their ‘disabilities’ or ‘sicknesses’ assessed under outsourcing to ATOS (a private medical company based in France) through the Work Capability Assessment, the suggestion has been made that IDS meant his ‘Work makes Freedom’ comment in the ‘literary’ sense, and that the Minister for Work & Pensions was actually alluding to the notion that he was suggesting that most unemployed, disabled and sick people were/are “gamblers and fraudsters” who “require to find the path to virtue through labour!”Probably the most scurrilous allusion any Minister has ever suggested under the mask of a supposedly “compassionate nature.”

If such historical remarks, references, comments, political policies and social policies are to be continually invoked by this Coalition – I have only one question?

Just how much of ‘Meine Kampf’ has this Government decided to ‘borrow’ from?

It seems that the Welfare Reform Bill will act to do more than just cut the level of benefits for “the most vulnerable.” For amongst the Government’s wide-ranging enactments is one which seems less insidious than it really is. This is the part of the Bill which seeks to change existing Housing Benefit Rules.

It is called the ‘Under-occupancy’ article and plaintively states that, if a Housing Association or Council Tenant occupies a dwelling with more bedrooms than actual occupants. They must forfeit a proportion of their Housing Benefit for each of the ‘unoccupied’ rooms. This ostensibly means that a man or woman occupying a two bedroomed house after a spouse has died, or a parent occupying a three bedroomed house after their children have left and they have divorced will be forced to ‘downsize’ or will have to pay a penalty – approx. £14.00 per unoccupied bedroom.This might seem ‘reasonable’ to the Taxpayer, but, its consequences are only just visible, and for those who are yet to experience redundancy and a huge cut in salary and therefore, living standards – it is one of the most vicious pieces of legislation to have been passed into Law!

So. Government have enacted a policy which will – in its ultimate expression, create ‘economic ghettoes’ populated by families who have perhaps lost a parent, parents who have children who have gone to University, single people who have divorced and other benefits claimants who have been dispersed from their original dwelling.

However, this is not the whole story, because in the course of my own enquiries about the possibility of moving to a two-bedroomed house elsewhere in the City I found that, though an unwritten rule, one cannot move from an area of lower Local Council Tax to an area of Higher Local Council Tax even if one is actually ‘downsizing.’ This ridicules the whole notion of ‘social mobility’ highlighted by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. In fact, what it means in real terms is that anyone unfortunate enough to be either unemployed, sick, disabled or mentally disabled will find themselves confined, imprisoned and detained wiithin a clearly strictured set of Economic Ghettoes, from which there can neither be escape nor movement.

1. There can be no escape because the eg. ‘Post-Code’ associated with the address will always act as a disincentive to employers, banks and health authorities.

2. There can be no movement (except downwardly into homelessness and destitution) because it is made impossible for anyone who is ‘downsized’ to upgrade their living space by virtue of 1.

Of course, when applied at a National Level, the consequences of such a policy become clear. Large swathes of the North of England will soon become ‘dumping grounds’ for the South of England’s unemployed ( who are more likely to consist of ethnic minorities and large, nuclear families who have lived in poverty for most of their lives) , disabled and ill.

In conclusion.

This suggests that it has always been the hidden motivation and intention of the Coalition to create Economic Ghettoes consisting of families and individuals on Benefits who are unable to move to find work, to move socially or to even aspire to do so.

Families, single-people, the permanently disabled, the mentally disabled and ill and varying classes of the sick are all to be effectively ‘imprisoned’ in the North of England: while the South of England lives under the impression that the North is simply being punished by The Coalition and Parliament for its economic ‘weakness.’

In essence, those who are regarded as being ‘economically damaging’ to the expensive, high-standard of living and affluence (though not due purely to its own lack-of- industry) of the South of England will be essentially ‘repatriated’ to the cheaper, lower standard of living and(alas!) increasingly far less affluent North.

FYI. The proof and evidence of my assertion is already in the public domain, for Benefits Claimants in areas close by the newly constructed Olympic Stadium in Newham, London, were being forced by the Local Council to move to “smaller: more suitable properties” according to Tory Council Officials to an area in Halifax some 120 miles from the Capital as a beginning gambit and the opening move in what may yet become known as the “London Clearances..”

Britain is to be seggregated.

More significantly (but a question which Media Plaudits and Local Politicians seem to be unable or unwilling to ask)

What exactly does this mean for the Economic Survival of the North of England? Or is the North of England to be sacrificed as it was in the 1980’s in the Government’s destruction and wholesale dismantling of the Manufacturing, Mining and Steel Industries?

Is the North of England, (along with its rising population) going to be simply ignored: marginalized and patronized by the hectoring and condescension of austerity – mad Parliament?

Because, if the North of England’s unemployment figures (that is, those which have not been ‘massaged down’ by inclusion in Ian Duncan “Arbeit Macht Frei” Smith’s ‘Workfare’ figures. Work which has already been statistically proven to have no significant or relevant economic benefit or effect upon the GDP of the United Kingdom.) are effectively allowed to increase to the point where there are more than 500 applicants-per-post or the percentage of working-age adults on benefits passes beyond 15% – 17% of the population, economic recovery in the North will be made almost impossible for many years and possibly decades.

If central Government does nothing to improve and enable the economy of the North of England.. The North of England must take action and separate itself from the Westminster umbilical. The North must not become the dumping ground for those unfortunate enough that Parliament have decided they must no longer be allowed to live in London.

Thus David Cameron and Nick Clegg are both involved in creating a very British kind of ‘lebensraum’ (Ger. ‘Living-space.’) and we, as a Nation are plunged backwards into the true nineteen thirties nature and myopic intentions of this increasingly and fanatically self-obsessed and fascist, authoritarian, unyeildingly and unflinchingly ruthless Government.

A modern–day, 21st Century British Government who have ‘borrowed’ extensively the economic and social policies of Adolf Hitler! Once thought a ‘madman’ and ‘psychopath’ – now the model of Politics in Great Britain circa 2012.

This is surely the beginning of UK Wide – ‘ECONOMIC APARTHEIDT?’ (and worse…..)